Until Death Do Us Part: Careers of Care giving Wives
This study uses care giving arrangements to account for the quality of life and health care use for wives caring for impaired husbands. The specific aims include 1) testing the hypothesis that care giving moderates the effect of stressor variables that directly influence wife outcomes; and 2) testing whether the death and/or institutionalization of the husband has direct effects on the quality of life and health care use of wives. For more information contact Don Taylor.

Prevalence and Cost of Dementia
This study’s specific aims are to 1) determine the sensitivity and specificity of clinical and ICD-9-CM diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD); 2) determine the cost to the Medicare program of persons identified with clinical ADRD compared to claims based-diagnosis; 3) determine the effect of ADRD on the well-being of the spouse; and 4) determine the effect of caring for elderly persons with ADRD in nursing homes or in the community on the demented person’s outcomes (cognition, mortality) and cost of caring for that person. For more information contact Frank Sloan.

Visual Impairment, Treatment and Effects on the Elderly
This study has 3 aims to 1) describe trends in use of therapeutic interventions for the 4 eye diseases, glaucoma, DR, ARMD, and cataract; 2) measure pharmaceutical as well as other therapies at longer time periods for analysis, and new data; 3) assess utilization, adherence to guidelines, the productivity of various therapeutic interventions, and outcomes associated with diabetes mellitus (DM) other than retinopathy (e.g., heart attack, stroke, amputation) for elderly persons with DM. For more information contact Frank Sloan.